Snow Leopard

A snow leopard gets into a nomad family’s pen and kills nine rams. Father and son then fall out over it: the son insists the leopard must be killed, the father argues for letting it go, and the brother who is a monk and the officers who arrive both speak for the animal’s life. Shot at high altitude on the Tibetan Plateau, the film is about how hard it is for a protected predator and the people living in that country to coexist. Pema Tseden wrote and directed the hundred and nine minute film, which turned out to be his last; he died in May 2023 at the age of fifty three, four months before its premiere. It screened out of competition at Venice and was named best film at the Tokyo International Film Festival.